Medals Carry A Lot Of Weight With Military

But do they count for so much that a man would kill himself out of embarrassment because he'd worn combat ribbons he didn't deserve?

That's the question everyone seems to be asking in the wake of the death of Adm. Jeremy "Mike" Boorda, the chief of naval operations who officials said killed himself with a gunshot Thursday afternoon after learning that a Newsweek reporter wanted to know whether he'd actually been awarded two combat decorations he once wore in official photographs.

Highly decorated old warriors think Boorda had no choice once reporters challenged his claim of Vietnam combat experience.

"He realized that he couldn't tell sailors integrity was paramount when he wasn't a paragon of integrity himself," said retired Army Gen. Mike Lynch, 72, an infantry officer wounded and decorated in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

"He knew," Lynch said, "there was no way he could explain it to the men."

"This is a difficult thing to make a mistake about,'' said one retired Navy officer. "(Boorda) always prided himself on the fact that he was a combat officer. To find out that he's not is not just an embarrassment. It's hypocritical."

"If you've got ribbons, you wear them properly, and you don't have no doo-dads on there that don't belong on there," said Carlos Hathcock of Virginia Beach, a retired Marine gunnery sergeant and combat-decorated sniper.

On the day of his death, Boorda was to be questioned about two "V" devices - ,-inch brass-colored letters pinned to commendation ribbons that denote valor in combat. The Brookings Institution's Lawrence Korb said Boorda's first V device, for service in 1965, could have been an innocent oversight.

"The Navy guys all got hazardous-duty pay and there was a certain amount of medal-mania even then," said Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense for personnel. "He was a young lieutenant, and maybe the other guys started wearing Vs."

Boorda's error "could have been an honest mistake," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Navy pilot and good friend of Boorda's. Some Pentagon officials offered the same spin, off the record.

But in later years, Boorda should have known better, said Korb, who knew Boorda when he was the Navy's top personnel officer. "Mike knew the regulations," he said. "That was his specialty."

Award citations from the period for other service members are unambiguous, as they are now. Citations for medals awarded for valor state clearly that the medal is to be awarded "with `V' device."

If Boorda did know, it's likely that his officer status helped conceal his secret. Among enlisted troops, combat decorations worn by freshly assigned personnel are cause for immediate questions. The questions aren't posed confrontationally; soldiers and sailors are just naturally curious about where a medal of distinction was earned.

If the medal was being worn in error by an enlisted member, Hathcock said, "You'd get told about it quick." Officers, he said, are a different matter. "I don't think anybody enlisted-wise would say anything about it to an admiral," he said.

Veterans say that while it may be difficult for civilians to understand, the tiny ribbons pack an amazing amount of power.

"The ribbons on a person's chest, that's the first thing you see when a person walks in the room," said Daniel L. Furman of Newport News, who served in Vietnam as a Marine corporal from December 1966 to November 1967. "That shows where a man has been, and what a man has done.

"People die for those," Furman said.

Bill Wiatt of Yorktown knows that firsthand. He left for Vietnam in 1968 with a full company of men. Only two, himself and a buddy, returned fully intact.

"Leaving Vietnam and coming home, at that time, the anti-war rallies were very strong, and it was like you were a criminal," said Wiatt, who served as an $86-a-month Marine corporal and received seven commendations, some of them for valor. "When I came home, I couldn't even buy a beer. Any award you would receive from the military was almost like an accreditation that what you did was correct."

For the sailors serving under him, Korb said, the combat decorations on Boorda's chest had a meaning as clear as a Super Bowl ring: "They said he'd been in personal danger from hostile fire."

Embellishment of one's accomplishments isn't unheard of - and wasn't so during Vietnam. "One of the things that got you recognition was the number of operations you'd been on," Furman said. Soldiers, he said, would volunteer to hop on supply helicopters to deliver the mail to troops in forward areas.

"Wow, that guy is really brave," Furman recalled saying out loud once upon seeing a soldier toss out some mail bags. A nearby sergeant told him, `He's not being brave, he's just getting his name in this operation we're on.' He was going to be in the operation for five seconds, but that would still go in his records."

Because the American military is vulnerable to charges of being a bit too free with decorations, said David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland, "that makes the medal associated with combat that much more important."

To lie about combat honors, conversely, is the worst kind of disgrace, because it diminishes the sacrifices of those who earned them. "Not only would they be officially punished, they'd be shunned," Segal said. "They would be outcast."

"It all boils down to no lying, no cheating, and no stealing," said Tom Moritz of Newport News, a retired Army Ranger and lieutenant colonel who flew helicopters in Vietnam in 1966-67 and earned two medals for valor, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. "It's a matter of integrity."